


Organum

by SouthernBird



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Introspection, Little Implications of Alia's Past too, Mega Man X5, No Editing Because We Die like X's Hope, Pining, Signas is probably OOC, Squint for X/Zero, War talk, shuttle crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again only for a chair to skid across the steel floor of the Command Center and a hand to touch his.“He’s going whether we like it or not,” Alia hushes, but everything about her face speaks of heartbreak.
Relationships: Alia/Signas (Rockman), X/Zero (Rockman)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15





	Organum

**Author's Note:**

> Organum - the doubling, or simultaneous singing, of a melody at an interval of either a fourth, a fifth, or an octave.

The only sounds that clatter in his aural cones are of his lone Navigator’s labor, and the tension in the air is near palpable, too humid and too stark.

“X,” Alia sighs into her mic, nearly too strained and too overwhelmed to speak in leveled comfort, “take a lower path. Looks like there’s more viral infection above you. Also, enemy combatants carrying medium grade military use weaponry, spotting about ten. I’ll scout ahead.”

As Alia navigates from her post, Signas taps a finger along his terminal, a grit along his teeth that tightens his jaw. His eyes scan the map sprawled out before him and X is but a tiny blue signature reading among a vast cartograph pieced together by their now defunct scouting drones. The signal is still for a moment as though pensive before going down the path that Alia has deemed the best route, and Signas nearly sighs in tepid relief.

Stepping into back up for one of his veterans has consistently concerned him, but not much can be gone as nearly every other non-infected Navigator has been relegated duties for medical relief or for repair work. Alia is now his only senior member left that has been somber enough to take the helm which in every word conceivable— and he is more grateful than she will ever know— but even now, the Commander can see the frail lines fissure along her mask.

Zero's loss has been more tremulous than any colony falling from the heavens. 

Let alone that before one of his grandest soldier’s would practically betray his fellows, Alia’s vote had already run heavy; Signas regrets that he had recommended that Douglas rig her chair to include a charge port that prioritized her over nearly all other department resources. It is not as though energy is so readily available as nearly everything is shot. Dust clouds that now seem a permanent fixture to the skyline around the Base have eradicated their use of solar fields and all nuclear plants have been sealed tight while erratic, barely sentient workers continue to subdue any failures. Every viable choice of energy composite before is now battered or inaccessible, but he will be damned if he will allow his Hunters to be defeated so easily, having demanded the mechanics to reinstall old electrical work to _make_ this work.

“X, wait. Signature ahead. Quite large. Let me further assess.” 

His processors halt in mere half seconds before he exhales, and Signas is back in that chair of Command Center, not in his usual position further up. Alia falls into a general silence, but Signas nearly wishes that she would speak out sooner as he must admit that he has found a small morsel of peace in her voice. Eyes glancing towards her still perfect appearance, there is a sense of normalcy that feints reality as though the situation is not as dire as it really, unfortunately, is.

If Alia were not sitting there, scanning over what few details she could derive, Signas may have been the only true Hunter capable of field operation that he would permit out of Base perimeters. With Zero’s infection leaving them without an ace and X’s morale scattered like glass along a shuttle site, Alia has carried the last remnants of hope along her shoulders. Her soft will-do confirmative has dampened the kindling worries that have popped loathsome static in his wires, and he could not be more thankful. He is, without a doubt, only best utilized when assessing supply routes and engagements of the frontlines, but he would have done it, anything to put a man between a clangorous apocalypse of dereliction and a miserable strife of recovery.

His thoughts are stunted, paused, as his monitor beeps, X’s voice crackling through the feed. Alia’s knuckles tighten as she filters the static and before him blooms swirling vines of lilac infection, what few sensors that have survived surveillance capturing the spread of the viral infection. Any preliminary map bleeds dry and void, leaving so much to the question of fate.

X is alone, possibly outmatched, in the quaking vision of something far more sinister than Signas’ young activation time could ever derive.

“Alia,” Signas gruffly starts because if X needs pulling out, he will be well out of range soon, and the last thing, the last damn thing all of them need is another lost solider whose oil would be on _his_ hands for his negligence.

But, ever the sail in the hurricane that stays true, Alia raises her hand to ease any fear that burrows in his throat. The Commander is quite taken aback as he finds himself leaning back into his seat at her gesture. He is has always prided himself as being calm in the calamity that is the unpredictable, yet she is the eye of the storm, ever so wise in her precise motion.

“… I agree. I think it would be best to investigate further. This appears to be a primary source of the virus outcropping much like the Eurasia site. Proceed with caution, but… I think he will be there, X.”

The ambiance is stricken burdensome and asphyxiating; the Commander of the Hunters is about to be superseded while everything in his core programming tolls in bellowing presumption. They are about to let their last line of defense, their last promise to end this nightmare, to enter some territory that he cannot scope. There are endless lines of generals of old that ring tirelessly through his banks, all database uploads to help him better understand what it means to lead and to decide.

Signas, personally, wants to tell X to stop and come home. Of all times to think too much, right then, he absolutely comprehends the fear that might have settled in the Blue Bomber’s systems, that uneasiness painted with dread that smears all inside and out and feels _uncomfortable_. There is not enough information to make a decisive notion, all of this hell ground nascent. Signas is brave and commands the same of his soldiers, but the literal world is at stake if they lose X.

He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again only for a chair to skid across the steel floor of the Command Center and a hand to touch his.

“He’s going whether we like it or not,” Alia hushes, but everything about her face speaks of heartbreak; from the crease of her brow, the fathomless guilt in her eyes, and the downturn of her lips. Everything inch of Alia that Signas has come to know is bathed in such cold, lifeless light and it lacerates him so bottom deep that nothing syncs right for a few seconds.

The Commander is a proud centurion, gladius sharp and iron sturdy, but the abstruse remorse that swims in her eyes nearly flails him into such timidity that words would seem to be a nuance to her ears.

“And… I can’t blame him, can you?”

No, he cannot, but his voice is a lonesome canary that sits in a silver cage in wait for the fumes to beseech it to tweet erratically for her cause.

“I can’t. I won’t. Losing someone precious especially when you could have stopped it—.”

“… No,” the soldier answers in a somber tone more befitting a eulogy, “no, I suppose I cannot.”

Alia smiles her best, but her countenance is more a haunted grimace in spite of how she touches along his knuckles. Any hearth of warmth found in her is gone, replaced only with an aged hollowness that echoes of a past life that Signas has only glossed over in her forms submitted for the position she holds now.

The woman before him is no reploid, but rather a ghost, some disconsolate specter that has clawed out from the waves of a torrential sea, ice laced in fragile fragments around her neck like noose of her own devices. Perhaps as she came to shore, sand would grit her legs and rock would cut her hands, but nonetheless, her phantom form would walk the earth with an endless, silent scream.

He truly must stop reading human books before he shuts down for the small, fleeting charges he permits himself for the sake of their mission. He is beginning to write melancholy imagery in his head, his original programming dissolving into scattered data at the mere illusion of her.

If he peers deep enough though, he sees _Alia_ , sees her in all her glory, some small thing that budded golden from that ghost though the cold hands of her past ghoul will forever grip her tight to pull her down into a flotsam tomb.

The striking thought stirs a desire to hold her hand in the palm of his, so he does.

“However, you are asking me,” Signas begins evenly though his pistons flare in sporadic intake as he commits an act of affection that has enchanted him ever since he saw her smile when she was greeted into his office for her first analysis, “to trust in something I cannot see.”

That sadness purveys, but softens just so as her gaze falls to their hands. He notes how she never pulls away; instead, her fingers wrap ever so closer and his core seizes and nearly misfires. Yet, Alia’s eyes catch his in some intrinsic way that only she revels in and her voice is a murmur nearly lost in the roar of his head, “data is a strange thing. It’s concrete, static, and hardly fails unless it is by outside error. But, Zero said once— at least, I heard him say— that some things cannot be analyzed. Only felt.”

Signas regards her silently before some quirk of a grin twitches along his jaw. How funny that she, this woman comprised of fortitude and scientific logic, this woman that was so similarly on his wave length yet just an octave or two higher, would allow frivolity in her stance. If it would be that the earth was not on the last of her quaking shambles, there might be more humor swimming effervescent in his artificial lungs. If I would be that the earth were not crying in pain, bruised and cut along her soil and her rock, Signas might would finally ask her if she would join him for alkaloid coffee.

If anything outside these cracked walls was still innocuous, the Commander might would crumble at his desires to learn Alia.

Instead, he sighs, teeth sucked in a tight sound before he grips her hand to ready himself for the blow she will undoubtedly give. “You want him to press on.”

Crimson bleeds into his eyes as he closes them, a grin flashed over a shoulder and golden hair sweeping back. In his ears, the rumble of rocket engines nearly overwhelm him and he swears he can smell the lightest hint of octane. Then, signal break— static feed— and some relief that washes down right frigid once the dust settles and Signas knows that the plans he confirmed and approved lost the world one of its last hopes. He carries the guilt of all, but mostly, he does so by his own demands.

_“I won’t die on some easy mission.”_

Horror sweeps through him like acid, burns and melts and chars in its rushing path through him as the screams water through the pulsing, every facet of the scene when Alia called the collision flaring and contorting into the forefront of his processors. To his left, X’s heart is wrenched from him, leaving him reckless and anguished, sentiments archaic and yet still so heart wrenching Signas cannot capacitate them. To his right, Douglas’ pale and empty countenance strikes a nail into Signas’ side again and again, sinking deeper and ever to close to his core to threaten shut down. Then, Alia—.

“Commander, look at me. Please.”

So, he does, as he is commanded, now a dutiful soldier that feels so old, too old, like something has snipped each of his competences and left him to just simply wish upon the good ol’ days. War seems ancient, misery his chaotic fiend of a friend, and something that can be seen and analyzed would be God-given.

He meets someone that he knows, that he trusts, and Alia is before him in her surety that he could hardly work the grit to tell her _no._

“He will go on. He’ll see and feel what we can’t from here because it’s _Zero_. He’ll come back— whether with Zero or not, I cannot be sure.”

Her eyes, so blue, so depthless in ocean hue, plead with him even though his battle is lost, beg him though she takes his large hand in both of hers, her fingers barely wrapping around his palm, “I will guide him however I can. You know I will. You know I can, but this is some… scenario where I can only do what feels right. So, please trust X. Please trust _me._ ”

 _‘_ How silly’ is the brittle thought that whispers in his head because since first sight, he has trusted her more implicitly that he has possibly trusted himself.

“Then proceed,” he relieves of himself, the guilt bearing deeper, deeper, until it’s nearly melded into the very metal that comprises him, crimson infecting him with a willingness to let go. Even as the virus’ vines have nearly engulfed the map between them, there it is, that symbol of blue, that vessel of seraphic judgement that will miraculously guide them into a future so indeterminate his logic cannot perceive it.

Feelings over facts has never been his style. After all, a miracle is, as far as the large reploid is concerned, some inorganic nuance likened to a dream. Some fantastical religious remedy for the heartache of humanity just praying on their knees for some sign of omnipotence. A miracle is devoid of restriction, haplessly coincidental in a world consisting of nothing but.

It will be a miracle that X returns; it will be by X’s own voracious will if Zero is at his side.

“You trust X then?” Alia inquires, her voice porcelain fragile, “truly?”

He could laugh; he does not. He holds her gaze, her hope meeting his whim.

“I trust _you,_ as you asked,” Signas answers with every vowel flaccid, with every consonant defeated, “and that is all I need to say.”

And the day will live in infamy and Signas will learn that miracles are, in fact, organic and unforgiving, taking and giving in all the wrong ways, as X returns from hellfire fray, unscathed and amnesiac and lacking his other half. The only solace he finds in the trembling darkness of his office is Alia at his door with two cups of rationed alkaloid coffee and an inclination to talk.


End file.
